Archived News:
This Cliff Bleszinski
interview on UTWorld talks with the lead designer at Epic games answering a
range of questions on subjects ranging from Unreal Tournament gameplay to
"industry jobs."
The Qtracker Homepage has a new beta
16 of Qtracker, the latest version of this Win32 server browser (which now also
offers an .mp3 streaming audio browser, and an HTML server list generator) that
can scour the Internet to locate servers for a bunch of different action games.
The new release adds "ICMP pings, super-fast server finding, wizard-based
server finding, new auto-installer, and Quake III IPX support. Basically, it
boils down to: Qtracker's even easier AND faster to use." A complete list
of what's new can be
found here.
AMD Athlon
Processor Rockets to 1GHz on AMDZone is the first look at a press release
that will apparently hit the wires tomorrow morning announcing the commencement
of shipments of 1 GHz Athlon processors.
- The Wargamer's
Metal Fatigue preview offers screenshots snapped from a beta of the
game they've received.
- The Camelot Vault's front page
has a pair of new shots from Dark Age of Camelot, Mythic Entertainment's
upcoming "massively multiplayer" RPG, and their Camelot Screenshots
section offers more new shots, as well, while GA-Source's
Dark Age of Camelot Details and Screenshots offers that same set of
images as well as more details on the game's 3D engine, shared with Prince
of Persia 3D among others, which is also the subject of this Adrenaline Vault
interview with John Austin of Numerical Design, talking about the
NetImmerse 3D Engine.
- Also, GA-RPG's Siege-of-Avalon Details and Screenshots
show off "Digital Tome’s RPG Siege-of-Avalon,
the industry’s first RPG Episodic Computer Game Novel scheduled for launch
April 27, 2000, will feature more than 140 supporting characters and
hundreds of "extras" through the use of new proprietary technology
the company developed."
- Finally, more on GA-Source, as their Martian
Gothic: Unification Screenshots and Features offers some brand new 3D action/adventure from Take 2 Interactive.
There's an
interview with Peter Binazeski on Glide Underground talking with the
publicity director at Simon & Schuster about progress on Star Trek: Deep
Space Nine-The Fallen, the upcoming Unreal-engine trekkie action game.
A new version 2.8 of TeamSound, the free
"Internet phone and voice conferencing for game players" program is
now available on their new homepage. According to the description, "In
addition to clear voice, TeamSound contains multiple channel support, command
& control for hotkey customization, computer generated text-to-speech for
sequencing actions on the battlefield and much more." The new version
includes an NT service for dedicated operation.
Version 1.0 of Reactive Software's
Hulk mod for Quake III Arena is now available. Like the namesake comic book
series, this mod pits a lone powerful Hulk (randomly selected at game start)
against a group of "puny humans," who attempt to gang up on him. The
player who kills the Hulk takes the next turn in his place, while doing damage
to the Hulk will earn frags for players, with the Hulk increasing his score by
fragging the players persecuting him. Thanks Timothy J. Agen.
The El Niño Quake Extensions page
has a new version 2.1.5 of Viz for Quake III Arena, written by Quake II VWep
author Hentai. This release fixes a few problems with picking up/dropping the
ball in rugby mode, and causes the ball to respawn after sitting still too long. A new release that adds more new gameplay features is expected
shortly (as Hentai says: "but first I gotta take a shower.").
A public beta (Rev. 430) of the Quake 3 System Management Server
offers a replacement for the Quake III Arena default server console. "It
allows you to choose which server you want to monitor (if you have multiple
servers running on one box), and offers a lot of features that the default
console doesn't."
The new version 0.3 of Quake2 Relay
is now available, promising "demos on steroids," and basically
delivering just that, as this utility overcomes some of the limitations of Quake
II demo recording, allowing the recording and playback of entire Q2 matches from
any perspective, rather than just the recording player's viewpoint. The new
release adds Linux support and a tool to convert relay demos to regular Quake II
demo format.
A new beta 0.86 of the QBind
advanced script editor for Quake-engine games is now available (thanks FileClicks).
Included in the new version is enhanced support for the latest versions of Quake
III Arena, as well as improved Win2K support.
AvP FragFinder is an
online server browser program available from Aliens Versus Predator dot Com
to allow you to find Aliens versus Predator multiplayer servers on the Internet.
If you are running a server, there's also a simple form to fill out to get
yourself listed.
Nope, nothing wrong with any demos today (that we know of), but a correction to
a reference that's appeared a couple of times to the 3D engine used in Gore, the
upcoming shooter from 4D Rulers. A couple of recent updates have referred to
this as a proprietary engine, when in fact Gore is being developed using the
Slam engine from Slam Software.
Naturally, we regret the error, and any confusion it may have caused.
There's a contest on Quake3zone.net
offering the chance to win one of a pair of those cool id Software hockey jersey
to the winners of a random drawing. GA-Strategy's Build-a-Bot Giveaway
offers a Sony DVD player, Diamond Multimedia cards, and Metal Fatigue gadgets to
the winners of their Metal Fatigue Build-a-Bot contest. Stomped @ E3's
Win the Future contest offers a copy of each of Diablo II, Halo, and Team
Fortress II for the authors of the best essays on why they deserve to win, for
those who'd rather do homework than pay cash.
There was a little follow-up activity on yesterday's Link of the Day after it
was posted, I added a note after a few folks noticed that the blurb on the site
said that "victims" of the phone smash dealie were not
compensated for the damage (thanks Simon Medisch), while the note we posted with
the link originally indicated they were. More significant, however, is the
reason they could get away with such vandalism, as the results of some look-ups
determining the ownership of the site seem to indicate the whole thing is
probably staged (thanks Rob Heiser and John Fraser), much to the relief of phone
wielders and dismay of anarchists everywhere.
Link of the Day: What Breed of Dog Are You?
Apparently I'm a German Shepard. Thanks Ant
(a Chihuahua).
Bonus Link: Hidden
DVD Features (computer required for some). Thanks again Ant.
Story of the Day: Who Owns the Internet?
Thanks yet again Ant.
Bonus Story: Is
Your Computer Possesed (sic) by a Demon? Thanks Godzilla.
There are some new
Rogue Spear: Urban Operations screenshots on SimHQ.com showing a bunch of
shots they've snapped off upon receiving a build of the follow-up to the
follow-up to Rainbow Six.
Unreal Universe Deus Ex Interview Series
continues with a Q&A with ION Storm's Harvey 'Witchboy' Smith talking about
his work on Deus Ex, ION's upcoming science fiction RPG, discussing various
gameplay elements, the game's AI. location based damage, and more.
An update to the Half-Life FAQ on I.Am-Half-Life
adds 14 new frequently asked questions (and answers) about Valve's shooter,
including troubleshooting tips for all manner of problems it is possible to run
into.
The Starlancer
preview on GameSpot UK follows the pigs in space theme in looking at
Warthog, who are teaming up with Digital Anvil to create Starlancer, the
upcoming space combat game that will serve as a companion to the also upcoming
Freelancer. In addition to the extensive game preview the piece also goes into
considerable detail on the history of the project, and how the folks at Warthog
hooked up with the Roberts brothers at D.A., and a Starlancer on GameSpot UK
Gallery showing various ships of the line that will be at your disposal in
the game.
A new version 0.99.1 of JHexen has been released. There are a lot of changes and fixes in this OpenGL and Direct3D port of Raven's venerable Hexen, most notably new support for 3D sounds through DirectSound3D, A3D 3.0 and EAX 2.0, as well as several rendering and menu improvements.
Interplay has released a playable demo for Invictus: In the Shadow of Olympus, their recently released strategic role-playing game set in a mythological world. The demo weighs in at a massive 103.5 MB, and more details are available at the readme page.
Computer Games Online has posted their GameStock 2000 roundup which, among familiar screenshots from most other titles shown at the event, sports three new images from MechWarrior 4, the giant robot combat game.
French developers GameSquad have updated their Devil Inside screenshots gallery with some fifteen new images from their upcoming third-person horror action game.
Alice@Stomped has posted a new piece
of concept artwork from American McGee's Alice, the hybrid first and third person
Quake III Arena engine title being developed by Rogue and Electronic Arts. This
week's image is of the "Blood Roses," and they hope to post more artwork
each week.
Two previews of the Dreamcast version of BioWare's MDK 2 (which is virtually
identical to its PC counterpart) have popped up: incitegames has another
one of their trademark MPEG movies of in-game footage, and Daily Radar has
posted a
Q&A with BioWare CEO Dr. Gregory Zeschuk talking about the game, including
the inevitable question about the title (which as everyone knows stands for
Millionaire Divorces Knockout).
An alpha version of Assassins,
a mod for Quake III Arena that adds four new player classes, new weapons, and
other items, has been released, and is available for download at
its official site. This is an alpha, so naturally bug reports and feedback
are requested.
Version 0.02 of the server-side Oni
Bot for Quake III Arena has been released. It's still an early release of
the bot, but the author says that the bot can, "find targets in its field
of view and attack the target." But he has high hopes for the project,
as it is part of a larger scientific research project in Artificial Intelligence,
and it utilizes, "the latest techniques in multi-agent systems."
PC.IGN has updated their existing
preview of Ground Control with a whopping 14 screenshots and 12 movies in
Quicktime format, all from a beta build of the game they received. And if you're
looking for still more screenshots, 9
new shots are up at GameSpot News (oddly enough, from a build of the game).
The
Coming of Age of Asheron's Call is the name of an interview with Turbine's
Toby Ragaini and Scott Herrington on ActionZine. They talk to the lead designer
and producer of Asheron's Call about the past, present and future of their massively
multiplayer role-playing game.
At GameStock just the other day, Microsoft announced the first details about
The Conquerors, the upcoming add-on pack for Age of Empires II. There are three
previews up, one
at Gamecenter, and two separate ones at GameSpot News - the
first one featuring the initial announcement, and the
second one containing a look at the logo and additional details.
A new version of Beryllium,
a server-side only mod for Quake III Arena has been released, and is available
for download at its
official site. This new version adds stats regeneration and the ability
to change player speeds in addition to other changes.
Doom, Damnit! has posted what can only be described as a
confrontation with id Software's Christian Antkow, that results in his admitting
to creating some incredibly horrible maps for Doom way back when. Just because
they like torturing him, they've even posted them, so you can see for yourself
just how bad they were (for the record, I think I've made a worse level, but
I never let anyone see it for obvious reasons).
A new preview of Crimson Skies,
based on a demonstration of the game at this week's GameStock show, is up at
PC.IGN. Crimson Skies is a new action/flight-sim from Zipper Interactive, the
company behind Mechwarrior 3.
Q3Map Explorer is the name
of a new front-end for id Software's Q3Map and Bspc tools, allowing you to easily
set compiler switches, and even a complete arena editor for adding bots to .arena
files.
For those of you whose little people just won't
listen to reason anymore, GameSpot's Game Guides has posted their
full strategy guide for The Sims, available in their usual online (free)
and downloadable PDF (pay only) formats. Also, two guides for Allegiance are up at Allegiance Zone,
one
on Turreting Basics and one
dealing with the Scout Supply Squad.
PlanetMoon Central has posted a
new single-panel cartoon by Planet Moon's Shawn Nelson, poking fun at all
the new features the company has just added to their upcoming action/strategy
title Giants.
- St-Armada.com has posted the results
of their beta test contest, so hop over there and see if you won.
- Clan Death DealerZ are giving away
twelve limited-edition Everglide Giganta mouse pads, all you have to do is
answer their baffling question of the week. There will be a new contest every
week for the next seven weeks.
- Fast-MHz is throwing a contest to
win an Asus V6600 (GeForce 256) video card.
- The map depository MapFinger, which
features user-made levels for everything from the Quake games to Warcraft
II, now boasts over 1,000 original maps...
- Hellhound has posted a
brief new strategy guide for Quake III Arena CTF...
- Z-Axis has posted an
interview with the infamous Mynx of PlanetQuake's Dear Mynx column (which
you can blame, or thank our own Blue for)...
- CamelotVault, a recently opened site devoted to covering Camelot, an upcoming online RPG game, features a special Focus
Group Message Board that the developers will be monitoring...
- Esylum.net is a new hosting service
for game sites, offering free hosting and a percentage of ad sales...
- David "crt" Wright, the author of Rocket Arena, has written an
article at GameSpy.com on the future of mods...
- Stomped@E3 has posted an
interview with Doug Lowenstein the head of the IDSA, the organization
that runs E3...
Well, if you live in Japan, then today is officially Playstation 2 day, as
the little console is now on sale, and no doubt available absolutely nowhere.
It'll be interesting to see if Sony delivers on their promise of having over
a million units for sale...that alone should be worth watching. For those of
you considering importing the thing, be warned - for starters, it's quite possibly
illegal ( according
to this story, at least), and then there's the fact that its region encoding
applies to DVDs as well as games. So that means you can't watch US DVD movies
on the machine - just imports. And of course, then there's the price...I've
seen them being advertised at almost $900, with games going for as much as $80
(not counting the ones that come with additional hardware). I think I'll wait
for the US release...and sit here in total envy of anyone who actually has one.
Link of the Day: Phone Bashing
- a bizzare site with clips of guys dressed in giant foam cellphone costumes
literally bashing innocent people's cell phones (although they were all refunded
for the act). Thanks Snap. ( Update: ( by Blue) seems they actually didn't refund these phone owners diddly-squat...pretty bizarre, actually).
Story of the Day: Japan
police step in as PlayStation mania heats up (keeping with the theme here,
of course).
Bonus Story: Student
wins $1,500 from school for losing Pokemon cards (thanks Buclerpp).
.plan of the day: Yesterday's Randy Pitchford .plan update. Just because it means so much to him. ![=]](/miscimages/smiley4.gif)
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